Reflections on teaching as a second career

The wonderful journey of a school year

Students, teachers, staff, and bus drivers, were all ready for this Memorial Day weekend. Breaks in the school calendar seem to come at just the right time.

We’ve been having some warm weather, almost summer-like, and the landscape in this part of New York seems to change daily. Hillsides and pastures have turned green, farmers are plowing and planting their fields, the first cuttings of hay have started (early, it seems to me) and the phenomenon of spring fever is racing through the school infecting everyone.

When we all return on Tuesday there will be less than twenty days left in the school year, and I know from experience that no other part of the year passes so quickly.

A lot happens in a school year, and it is especially noticeable in an elementary school serving grades kindergarten through two. The students in my room turned six this year, and when you consider that they have been alive for about 72 months, the ten months they spend in kindergarten are a significant portion of their lives. Kindergarteners change a lot from September to June.

The first days of school in September are scary to most 5 year-olds. They each wear a small tag around their neck announcing their name and the name of their teacher. Both are important because, in the first week of school, some of them come off the bus in tears, unable to speak. The name tags help you get them to where they belong.

By now, in late May, these young students walk through the school with an air of confidence. From sometimes crying, often cowering, mostly bewildered young children, they have grown emotionally, intellectually and physically. They have their circles of friends, know the school staff by name, and are brave enough to risk giving me a high-five when we pass in the hallways.

I suppose a year of experience does that to all of us, though not always as much as it does to a kindergartener.

Many years ago, I posed an odd question to a good friend who I knew would be knowledgeable in such things. I asked him, “How far does the earth travel in its orbit around the sun?” Peter is someone who can identify clouds and constellations, is a consummate researcher, and loves finding answers to questions. I knew he would come up with one. He got back to me a day later via email.

The earth moves around the sun at a speed of 18.5 miles per second, or 66,490 miles per hour. In a year you will travel 582,851,340 miles. Enjoy the trip!

I can’t attest to the accuracy of his math but given the numbers, he could be off by twenty percent and it would still be astounding.

And that’s the way I see each year that we live, and each school year that my students go through. They may think nothing is happening, but oh it is! Or, they may think a lot is happening, and they have no idea how much. It’s is just a trip around the sun, or a year in kindergarten, first or second grade. It is also enough time for so much to happen.

For the students I see each day, it might be time enough to learn the alphabet, learn to read, understand our base ten counting system, find their way to the bathroom, cafeteria, nurse’s office or gym. It is time enough to make new friends, get into quarrels, and solve differences. Thankfully, the trip is also long enough to high-five Mr. H in the hallway.